General

These days, automation is all the rage. Companies are using AI and robotics to automate every possible task to create greater efficiencies and profits, leading to heated debates about the roles humans will play in business in the future.

In an interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in 2015, Elon Musk suggested detonating nuclear bombs over the poles on Mars in order to help make the red planet more liveable for the colonists Musk is planning on sending there. The theory is that the nukes would vaporise a fair chunk of Mars’ ice caps, liberating enough water vapour and carbon dioxide (both of which are greenhouse gasses to warm up the planet substantially.

Anti-ageing technology has been a multi-billion Dollar industry for decades. From anti-oxidant bearing vitamins to the lotions and potions sold by cosmetics companies, there are numerous products on the market to help fight the signs of ageing. Until now, that was the best modern science could achieve: Fighting the signs of ageing, but not the process itself.

Sobering images recently released by NASA have illustrated the effect climate change is having on our planet. Comparing Landsat images from 1972 and 2019, it’s obvious that the branching network of glaciers that empty into Greenland’s Sermilik Fjord has changed significantly in the last 50 years.

Quantum physics studies the smallest energy levels and particles known to science. At this miniscule level, something called quantum entanglement occurs, where two or more particles become entangled and they can only be described by a quantum state for the pair or group, rather than by their individual quantum states. A quantum state includes things like position, momentum, energy, angular momentum, spin and so on.

An acrimonious divorce has resulted in the first allegation of – and investigation into – a crime that was committed in space. According to reports, astronaut Anne McClain accessed the bank account of her estranged spouse from the International Space Station (ISS), resulting in a complaint being filed with the Federal Trade Commission.

South Africa is currently experiencing one of its worst economic downturns in decades. The pressure is being felt by all spheres of society, from government organisations, to private businesses, all the way down to consumers.

We may think that we have a much better understanding of the human body than Leonardo da Vinci did when he drew the Vitruvian Man, and while we have made great strides, it turns out that we still have discoveries to make. Scientists recently pinpointed a new organ involved in the sensation of pain that could change the way we develop painkillers and treat chronic conditions.

Most people who like to have a glass of wine with dinner, or a sip or two of whiskey after a hard day, are probably unaware that counterfeit alcohol is a growing issue around the world. Over the past few years, authorities have seized thousands of bottles of fake whiskeys and sparkling wines, many of which looked and tasted almost exactly like the real deal.

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Last week, the Department of Health published the long-awaited National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill for public comment. Government has been talking about implementing NHI for a number of years, raising a multitude of concerns from the health sector and civil society alike. This draft bill answers many of these questions, and raises many more.

This week, scientists discovered the value in trusting the adage that a fresh pair of eyes can provide new insights. A team led by Professor Paul Barrett, a dinosaur researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, re-examined a fossil that had been discovered in the 1970s, and found that it had been misidentified as Massospondylus, a type of dinosaur that was very common in South Africa 200 million years ago.

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking was almost as well known for his computerised speech generator as he was for his work. Suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for most of his life, Hawking was unable to control the muscles in his face, leading to difficulty swallowing, speaking and eventually breathing.

Every child educated in the Western system over the past 100 years has learned that Sir Isaac Newton defined gravity after an apple may or may not have fallen on his head in the 1600s. In an 1687 paper, he wrote that “gravity really does exist. [It] acts according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies”, and this formed the foundation of scientific thinking for 300 years.

Crown Publications, one of South Africa’s largest business-to-business publishing houses, came into existence in 1986. Since then, the company has grown from producing a single magazine, Electricity SA (renamed Electricity+Control), to publishing six monthly magazines, three quarterlies, and a number of engineering handbooks.